The Terroir of Raw Milk
As some of you every now and and then point out - our milk's taste and composition does indeed ever so slightly change all through the year - sometimes making it harder to froth up your Flat White milk perfectly or even impacting on the course of your cheese-making adventures...
While we ourselves at Riverside Milk, cherish these variations, we do appreciate that they may be confusing for some of our customers. Hence, let us explain...
Have you ever heard had about the 'terroir' of cheese or thought about how changes in soil, microclimate or cows' feed can impact on the raw milk you buy? Just like fine a fine wine's complexities in flavours and colours can be attributed to its terroir and 'sense of place', raw milk's taste and composition can not be standardised. Milk in winter will taste different than milk in summer - it may be creamier, more yellow and give you a higher yield of butter than before...
Milk from cows grazing in mountain regions will have other nuances than milk from somewhere else. Similarly, what cows eat can vary ever so slightly during the year - even on the same farm - and droughts like the one we just had makes pure grass feeding a challenge...
If you are a raw milk connoisseur or artisan cheese maker or passionate at-home Flat White drinker, you most likely will detect these changes in the milk's composition.
The awesomeness (and for some people perhaps downfall) of raw milk in all its fresh glory is exactly this ever changing terroir that many other raw, local and fresh products share and many people cherish. If you want to enjoy proccessed and standardised milk from all sorts of places thrown together, raw milk may indeed not be what you are looking for.
If you are, however, keen on raw goodness - ready to be enjoyed in all its seasonal and local nuances, like it has been for centuries, then Riverside Milk is probably just the thing.
So, the next time you drink a glass of Riverside Milk - give it a try and let it roll around your mouth like a fine wine:) Enjoy!
